
The Settlement of Beloit, as Typical of thi 

Best Westward Migration of the 

American Stock 




W 



HENRY M. WHITNEY, M. A. 
Professor in Beloit College 



[From Proceedings of The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, i8 



MADISON 

State Historical Society of Wisconsin 

1899 




Class F5g 3 

Book .I^AWfe 



The Settlement of Beloit, as Typical of the 

Best Westward Migration of the 

American Stock 






HENRY M. WHITNEY, M. A. 

Professor in Beloit College 



[From Proceedings of The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 



MADISON 

State Historical Society of Wisconsin 

1899 



^6 / V4 



THE SETTLEMENT OF BELOIT, AS TYPICAL OF THE 

BEST WESTWARD MIGRATION OF THE 

AMERICAN STOCK.' 



BY HENRY M. WHITNEY, M. A. 

Externally, the settlement of Beloit was not so very different 
from what has been found in other parts of the State; but in- 
ternally it had distinctive features, and those were such as 
may be called typical of the best pioneering work of the people 
of American stock. Beloit never went through the period of 
cowboy domination, with saloons as the chief ornaments of the 
streets, and the crack of the revolver as the chief diversifier of 
the monotony of daily life; indeed, it was a long time before 
the saloon was tolerated, and it has never had great prominence 
or influence. Beloit never had many people of the restless sort 
who come to pick up land as a speculation, selling out and 
moving westward as soon as they can get their price; such 
people, so far as they came there, on taking a good look at the 
situation, traveled on without stopping to invest. The pioneers 
of Beloit came to stay, and their children and grandchildren 
are still foi'emost in the life of the city, or have gone elsewhere 
because there came to them a call. Beloit had many of that 
class which endures the hardships and makes the .sacrifices, 
spending their strength in the pioneer days. — ■ perhaps, like 
Dr. Horace White, laying down their lives under the stress, — 
leaving the profits of the advancing prices and the enjoyment 
of the advancing comfort, to those who came in at a later day. 

The Rock River valley having been opened to settlement by 
the Black Hawk War, population swarmed in. You know the 
charm of the whole valley through Rock county, the bold bluffs 
above Janesville, the projection of Big Hill into the expanse of 

1 Address delivered before the Historical Convention, at Madison, Feb- 
ruary 22, 1899. 



130 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

prairie, and, lower yet, the location of Beloit, where the Rock 
is met by the Turtle, at what is now the state-line. The 
greater river comes down the narrower valley; the Turtle, 
using "the valley of what was in geologic days a great river, \ 
draining a great geologic lake, comes westward from Deiavaa 
lake and empties its exceedingly various volume into the staid 
and uniform Rock. At the commanding corner, where the two 
lines of bluffs come together, is a place where a West Pointer 
would set an earthwork to command both valleys ; indeed, per- 
haps it was the recognition ol this strategic quality that made 
Major Philip Kearney buy a few city lots just there in the in- 
fant days of the village, and perhaps it was the Beloit spirit 
that made him give these lots with all cheerfulness when Beloit 
College was looking for a local habitation to add to its name. 
At the very corner the mound- builders had set a giaut turtle, 
with his head towai'd the beautiful river scene; or perhaps only 
toward the fish of both streams and toward the long and shady 
ravine down which buffalo and deer loved to reach the river to 
drink; or, again, perhaps only so as to be able to keep one eye 
on the site of the future Janesville and the other on the sites 
of the future Rockton and Rockford; or perhaps to see that the 
state-line did not come any further up. I cannot undertake to 
answer for the motives of the mound-builders in shaping their 
totem at this commanding point, but I know that wandering 
Winnebagoes, long after the settlement of Beloit, came and took 
a look at their turtle; so, when private Abraham Lincoln went 
southward through the place, in returning from the surrender 
of Black Hawk, he found a Turtle Village, but it was not a white 
man's place. You may know that Beloit has the three types 
of prairie, the level on the north and south, — Rock and Win- 
nebago prairies, — the rolling on the west, and the bi'oken on 
the east. Fish were in the two streams in such numbers that 
they sometimes blocked the wheel of the settler's mill ; the deer 
and the wild birds wei-e equally abundant. Turtle Creek w^ould 
furnish two small water-powers till the settlers could gather 
their means to dam the Rock. Then there was gravel, unlim- 
ited gravel, — six hundred feet or more, as w^e now know, — 
and that would appeal with immense force to the New Eng- 



AMERICAN SETTLEMENT OF BELOIT. 131 

lander who had been toiling around the sandy end of Lake 
Michigan and then through the fathomless Chicago mud. In- 
deed, the firstjprofessor in Beloit College, struggling in Friuk 
& Walker's stage through the hundred miles of mud from Chi- 
cago, at last, as the stage went down Roscoe hill, heard the 
crunch of gravel under the wheel; out went his head at the 
window, and he asked the driver how much farther it was to 
that place where he was to try to set a college in the prairie- 
grass. "Seven miles," said the driver, and the young professor 
took fresh courage, for he thought that it was an omen that 
the college, when founded, would never get entirely stalled. 

But, to return: we must make out to see some picturesqueness 
in old Joseph Thiebault, the first white man known to have made 
Turtle Village his abode. He was a Frenchman trading with the 
Indians, and (for services rendered to General Scott as inter- 
preter in negotiating, in 1833, a treaty by v\'hich the Winneba- 
goes ceded to the United States all their title to the territory 
between the lakes and the Mississippi) he claimed all the land 
lying about his cabin within "three looks." Even if he had 
two wives with a corresponding number of children, that is not 
counted a disadvantage nowadays, at least in the congress of the 
United States. I speak of Thiebault chiefly because he had a 
log-cabin, for, when Caleb Blodgett came, early in 1836, and 
for $200 bought Thiebaulfs vast and rather dubious claim, the 
log-cabin, duly cleaned, became the abode of the settlers till 
they could build for themselves. It is not every community, 
even in the west, that can place its beginnings with so much 
exactness. Caleb Blodgett was a Vermonter by way of Ohio 
and New York, and he was, fortunately, a Beloit kind of man. 

Now, let us go to New Hampshire, far north of the White 
Mountains, and within a few miles of the Canadian line; there, 
on an affluent of the Connecticut River, is the quaint old 
village of Colebrook. Those who lived there must have been 
a hardy race, fit for pioneei'ing. In that village was a group 
of twelve men who felt that the world had for them some- 
thing larger and nobler than little Colebrook could ever affoi'd. 
They formed the New England Emigrating Company in Octo- 
ber, 1S3G, appointed Dr. Horace White their agent, and sent 



132 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

him across the country by such conveyauce as he could hire or 
buy, to find them a western home. R. P. Crane and O. P. 
Bicknell pushed westward too, and the three, after looking in 
many places, saw the strategic value of Turtle village and fixed 
their choice. They bought one-third of the Blodgett claim and 
returned to Colebrook to gather up their families and their 
goods. It has been said that the life went out of Colebrook 
when they left; I should prefer to say that these men had the 
vision to see the future to which Colebrook was necessarily des- 
tined, and the will-power to get into the path of empire while 
they were physically fresh. I fear Colebrook would have been 
as completely overshadowed even if they had stayed. By mid- 
summer in 1837, the colonists were in their new nbode and 
were breaking the wilceniess to the service of man. 

Dr. White's wife was from Bedford, at the other end of New 
Hampshire, and that connection brought to Turtle Village six 
families of equal sturdiness and value in determining the 
character of the town. The stamp of the settlement was at 
once so individual that its fame spread far and wide. The New 
England Settlement it was called, and it got plenty of abuse for 
its positive ideas, but also attracted many who liked those 
ideas and wanted to cast in their lot with such a people. L. G. 
Fisher, searching for a place, came to Watertown, heard of the 
New England Settlement, floated down the Rock till he reached 
it, and was there in time to be chairman of the committee to 
find a new name for the settlement. It was he who, starting 
with Belle and Detroit, evolved the present name. 

I have given these fragments of early history, not as new to 
the historian, but as new to many of you and therefore neces- 
sary as a framework in which to set what I may be able to 
say of a more abstract nature. 

Now the first thing that I want to say about my subject, the 
settlement of Beloit as representing the best westward migra- 
tion of the American stock, is that these men, and those whom 
they drew in after them in the earliest days, had an immense 
amount of practical sagacity. They knew enough to get out of 
the shadow of the Great White Hills (although if they had staid 
they might now at last be keeping hotels and coining money at 



AMERICAN SETTLEMENT OF BELOIT. 1 33 

White Mountain prices from the summer-resorters) ; they made 
no mistalces in the steps they took to obtain a location and to 
settle upon it; they knew the moral value of having gravel 
under their feet; they knew good land; they knew the value of 
a quarry, and of good oak-trees; they were attracted by the 
New England-like look of the country, and especially of the River 
Rock; they saw that the Rock River Valley must prosper if 
anything in this region could; they saw that it was a fit seat 
for empire. It was a piece of hardheaded business-sense to 
transplant themselves and their households to a place of so much 
promise; they saw that if they placed themselves at Beloit 
things must come their way. 

And again, they were physically and morally robust. Some 
of us remember the Irish that came to New England after the 
potato-famine in 18-1:5; they were often bent almost double, with 
hooked hands, waxy faces, and wolfish glances; many of them 
did not know what a sidewalk was for. It is the pride of New 
England that fifty years of American life have made excellent 
citizens of the grandchildren of those physical wrecks and men- 
tal dwarfs, but it took fifty years and the tremendous power. of 
the New England civilization to do it. I suppose the Italian 
and the Chinese who come to us are the most enterprising of 
their class, but the class is low; assisted immigration has dumped 
some poor material of manhood upon our shores. But just as 
most of the Germans, the Norwegians, the Swedes, and the Scotch 
ai'e selected stock, so the early settlers of Beloit were selected 
men and women; they might have prospered in Colebrook, in 
Bedford, or in the other places whence they came, but they 
wanted something better yet. They faced the wilderness bravely; 
they lived, in a way that now seems amusing, by barter and 
credit; later they had the beauties of wild-cat banking and the 
business depression of 1836-37 to make them realize what finarcial 
quicksands are. 

And again, they had large ideas, and so laid broad foundations. 
They platted the village in 1838 with broad New England -like 
streets, — streets that a New Engiander recognizes at once, — and 
they made College street the name of one of the choicest. It is 
an interesting fact that, when the committee, a})pointed a few 



134 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

years later to choose a site for the proposed college of the state- 
line, had viewed all the suggested locations, they not only 
selected Beloit as the town, but hesitated only between two loca- 
tions, both fronting on that same street. 

It is evident that from the start they meant to have a college. 
As I have wondered why that was, I have seemed to see three 
reasons: 1. That they were that kind of men: that of course 
was the fundamental fact. 2. That, being that kind of men, 
they had felt the great distance of the one college of New Hamp- 
shire from any of their old homes, and they wanted the luxury 
of having one within five minutes' walk — indeed, the plan to 
place it at the distance of a ten minutes' walk was suppressed. 
3. I think they had a seer-like vision of what was likely to 
happen to them and their children if they did not nurse the 
church and the school. Have you not felt the sadness of the 
sight when people, bright by early associations and bright by 
the attrition of new experience and new acquaintance, have set- 
tled down without recognizing that brightening and elevating 
influences must be carefully fostered about them, and, lacking 
these, have lost intelligence and spirituality, and their children 
have lost moral life as well? The West, with all its boasted 
superiority to the East, has many such cases of degeneration, 
and they have sometimes proved plague-spots in the body of 
the state. Now I believe that the Beloit pioneers saw that 
vision with sufficient clearness to make them want the college 
as well as the church, that they and their children might be 
saved from such a fate. 

[ said that they wanted also the church: they brought along a 
deacon on purpose. Before they got a church building they 
worshiped in a kitchen, and the prairie people came in ox-wag- 
ons to attend. They started a church-building, getting shingles 
in Racine on credit, hauling them across the country by ox- 
power, the driver sleeping under the wagon at night, and they 
honestly paid for the shingles in the spring. The church that 
they built was the most stately of the three Congregational 
churches existing in Wisconsin in 1844, — so stately, indeed, 
that it got into two editions of the American Encyclopedia, but 
it was not built by people oP wealth, except the wealth of devo- 



AMERICAN SETTLEMENT OF BELOIT. 1 35 

tion. It is au interesting illustration of their breadth of in. 
terest. that when the Conarregational church of Madison under, 
took to erect a house of worship, the people of Beloit, hardly yet 
«raerpfed from log-houses into houses made of the hard-wood prod- 
uct of their saw-mill, put their hands into their pocl^ets deeply 
enough to get $50 to help the folks up here. 

They had also great tenacity of purpo se. Tl ey had experi" 
•ences that would have made many other towns give up the ghost. 
They made mistakes, as we strewed our way with errors all 
through the war with Spain; but they lived down their mistakes, 
as we hope sometime to see a happy issue of this dreadful Phil- 
ippine mess. As with us, so with them, the way out was for- 
ward and upward. And, finally, they had great elevation of 
character. You remember that the Indian and the star on the 
coat-of-arms of Massachusetts are said to mean that the settlers 
of Massachusetts wanted the star of Bethlehem to shine over 
the shoulder of the red man whom they found here, to guide 
him on his way. I have sometimes wished that the motto of 
"Wisconsin were something more elevating than Forii:ard; one 
can at least read into it the sense of iqyirard, for that was what 
many of them meant. Those Beioit settlers meant upward when 
they pressed forward from their homes a thousand miles away. 
They brought the New Hampshire and Vermont brand of civili- 
zation and religion, while the more southern parallels were being 
filled by people of the Connecticut and Massachusetts kind. 
That difference may be read all over Wisconsin whenever we 
come upon cities or towns established by people of American 
stock. They wanted to make a commonwealth that should be 
g'ood and great. They had magnificent help froui men of other 
nationalities, they had the good sense to cooperate with them 
wisely, and the two produced a state of which we all are proud. 

The other day I was reading about the adoption of seals by 
various Massachusetts towns. The selectmen have aimed 
to have something significant of local history: Rutland 
uses the tree standing at the geographical center of the 
state. Gardner takes the figure of Sir Thcmas Gardner, from 
whom the town wa^ named; Brookfield pictures the burning 



136 WISCONSIN HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

load of hay that the savages pushed against the very last house 
when they had destroyed all the rest of the ancient village. 

Then I said, what representative seal shall we give to Beloit? 
I understood the significance of the badger for the whole common- 
wealth: he has a great nose for business; he does no harm if he 
is not molested, but can make life a burden for those who trouble 
him ; he is remarkable for the skill and the effectiveness with which 
he scratches the earth. That will do very well for the badger, 
although we have to spiritualize his attributes a little to be 
wholly satisfied to have him stand for our state; we wish he 
could do something better than dig. Then I thought that the 
totem left by the Winnebagoes would not be so very bad for the 
seal of Beloit, for Beloit has as yet no seal. The public-library 
seal has at the center a yawning blank, and the turtle-totem is 
the thing to fjll it. He is looking in the right direction, he is 
always on duty, he represents an animal that may be slow but 
is always safe; indeed, one of the race is fabled to have once 
outrun the speedy but unreliable hare. When our cities and 
towns follow the example of Massachusetts in this excellent 
matter of seals, as they are nobly following her example in the 
provision of public libraries and some other good things, the 
badger will stand for Wisconsin, the turtle for Beloit, and the 
seal of a wise and steady progress, intellectualized, spiritual- 
ized, working upward as well as forward, will stamp all our pub- 
lic affairs. 



.-^•^^ 



